RIP Joe South, Known Most for "Games People Play"

Joe South has died at age 72.

A lot of you never heard of him, of course. But he was a big singer/songwriter whose heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s.

An old picture of Joe South

There's one song by South in particular I've always liked, and I think about from time to time. It's called "Games People Play."  I first heard it when it came out in 1969 and I was a wee lad of  7.

Often songs I loved when I was little became awful when I was an adult, or vice versa. But this one stuck with me.

Some lyrics of "Games People Play" have extra resonance now, in this political season and in these times when so many people are telling us their god is better than our god.

Here's two examples of the song's lyrics to show you what I mean:

"Oh the games people play now
 Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean"

 And:
"People walking up to you 
Singing glory hallelulia 
And they're trying to sock it to you In the name of the Lord."

Sad to say, I guess times didn't change all that much in the four decades since South wrote that song, huh?
Here's the song/video to jog your memory

Go Away, Joey Buttafuoco!

I'm all for book publishing, but a new memoir by Joey Buttafuoco has to be the most unnecessary potential new publication to come along in ages.

Buttafuuoco, as only afficiandos of 1980s and early 1990s tackiness and trashiness remember, is the guy who had the affair with then-17 Amy Fisher, you know, the "Long Island Lolita."

He won't go away. Joey Buttafuoco plans a book!

The ever helpful Fisher decided to help her affair along by going to Buttafuoco's house and shooting his wife, Mary Jo in the face, thereby getting rid of her forever, Mary Jo failed to do her part by surviving the shooting.

Buttafuoco now says he's penning a book called "Closure" that's telling his side of the tale, as if anybody cares, according to TMZ. 

Yeah, that's a reason to go on living. Wait around for Joey's hot new book. Sigh.

Buttafuoco puts on his halo as he explains his reasoning for writing the book: "It's time for all of us to move on. My book is closure for everyone and our respected families. It's time."

Uh, Joey? It was time to move on decades ago. What hubris! I'm going to have the last word and close this. Never mind that for most people, this episode closed eons ago.

I'm always fascinated by the number of people who, when caught in something tawdry, milk it for all it's worth. I get the need to make money, but a lot of these people seem to celebrate their awfulness, as if it's something to be proud of. "I'm weird and icky so I deserve to make lots of money because I am weird and icky."

Our beloved Amy Fisher has also made a career of this mess.  She wrote a book or two about the shooting and everything else surrounding it. I didn't read it, but I'm sure it was a literary masterpiece.

She later got involved a bit in the pornography industry. Time to pay the bills, I guess.

I guess the only part of the economy that's doing great is the weird and icky industry.

Duck Family Causes Worldwide Heart Attack Epidemic

Somebody captured a video of a mother duck and several ducklings crossing a very busy freeway near Toronto.  Watching the video induces a sure heart attack, so be warned, even if you know the outcome of the duck crossing. (It's ultimately good, if harrowing)

Imagine the heart attacks among the motorists on the freeway encountering the ducks. You don't want to run over something so cute, but you don't want to swerve across three lanes of traffic and cause a 100 car, fiery pileup, either.

In any event, watch the video if you dare. Just consider this a public service to maintain full employment among the world's cardiologists.

Rick Rolled By Mad Men

I found this strange video on YouTube which had to take a lot of needless work. Somebody pieced together one-word clips from the show "Mad Men" to string together Rick Astley's 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up."

Essentially, we've been Rick Rolled by Mad Men.

For those unfamilar with the term, "rick rolled" means to trick people into clicking on a link that takes them to the chirpy "Never Gonna Give You Up. " It also means to play the sticky sweet song at highly inappropriate moments. Rick rolling quickly became an Internet cliche.

To make this Mad Men Rick Roll video, it must have taken months to comb through episodes of the show to find the words and edit them. At least the show is good. But I hope whoever made this video  was paid well. It had to be incredibly tedious to put it together.

At least the video itself isn't tedious, but it is an acquired taste. See for yourself:

August: Another Month of Fails.

Every month (almost, anyway) I post a video compilation of people failing, just for fun.

A pattern immediately emerges each month. Most people caught on camera doing stupid things are doing so while skateboarding, riding a bike or performing an attempted physical derring do.

 Hey guys (and it's almost always guys), don't you know that the most common last words uttered by mankind are "Hey, watch this"

 Maybe you can write me off as a coward for not ever doing strange and wild tricks on a skateboard or bike. But I'm also sitting here blissfully free of broken bones and road rash. Sometimes it pays to be a wimp, I guess.

In any event, now is the time to feel superior by watching this clip of various people almost surely much dumber than you are.

Torture the Enemy With This Video!

I'm opposed to torture, but if we were to start violating the Geneva Convention big time and tormenting people to death, I've found the perfect instrument to do it.

It's got all the elements to send people off the deep end. Weird noises, a squeaky singing voice, a bad ukelele, terrible production values, stupidity, a person who thinks she's a celebrity and is not, and especially, whackadoodle politics.  Watch the video below as long as you can to see how much endurance you have.

So, courtesy of the boingboing.net, here is (drum roll.....) Victoria Jackson singing about the communist in the White House!!!!

The Gays are Causing Horrible Hurricanes!!

The gays did it. Again.

That awful Hurricane Isaac which caused so much damage on the Gulf Coast, was all the fault of  gay people, at least according to some whackadoodle "religious" pundits.

You see, New Orleans is holding it's "Southern Decadence" gay festival this weekend. The city was also hosting the yearly event back in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina stopped it when it practically leveled the Crescent City.

The "logic" is that the hurricanes are God's way of punishing New Orleans for putting up with those sinful gays.

Never mind that Southern Decadence is largely held in the New Orleans French Quarter, which mostly escaped damage from Isaac. And I looked at Entergy's Web site today. They're the big power company down there in Louisiana. Almost the whole area around New Orleans had no electricity, but the lights were on and the refrigerators were humming quite nicely in the French Quarter, thank you very much.

And from what I understand, Southern Decadence will go on this weekend, as scheduled. If God tried to stop the event, he's being a bit ineffectual, don't you think?

If God really wanted to punish "the gays" why did he cause such awful flooding in Plaquemines Parish and Slidell and other Louisiana cities and towns? After all, the people from those communities were just trying to live their lives. I'm sure they have no influence over Southern Decadence. Why punish them?

Stephen Colbert actually had the best "explanation" as to why hurricanes happen and why gay people cause them. Said he:   "Hurricanes form from rising moisture created by hot steamy man action aboard a gay Caribbean cruise. When that sin gets high enough it makes the angels cry and those tears fall to earth in the form of massive precipitation because homosexuals are a vital part of the water cycle." That's why the gay symbol is a rainbow!"

I'm sure Colbert's thesis is coming to a fundamentalist science school curriculum soon.